Acquire Top 7 Cloud Computing Security Risks
There is no doubt in stating that several benefits are there while using the cloud computing technology. Among all, few of them are – faster market time, lower cost, and increase in productivity. Apart from all these, cloud security is the major concern for all IT departments before adopting the cloud storage and driving the adoption of CASB. Employees disagree to wait for IT and use the services for working as the larger part of “bring your own cloud” or BYOC movement. So, our aim behind delivering this blog is to make enterprises aware of cloud computing security risks and solutions to be safe from them.
Top 7 Cloud Computing Security Risks In An Organization
- Losing of Confidential Data: Automatically the organizations start saving their intellectual property on cloud when they adopt cloud computing. A survey on cloud computing trends 2018 says that 21% of the files having sensitive data are stored in the cloud and that too in sharing mode. Whenever the cloud services get leaked, attackers easily gain access to the confidential items. This risk of data loss can be reduced, if certain set of terms and conditions are applied to data ownership while uploading them.
- Regulatory Actions and Compliance Violations: Nowadays majority of enterprises access data under certain regulatory actions of the information like FERPA for confidential students records, HIPAA for private health record, and other regulations of government and industry. Under all these controls, it is the responsibility of the organizations to be aware from the fact that where their files are being stored, who all are having rights to access them, and what more measures can be taken to access them. These things are recommended because there are chances that BYOC often breaks all these controls and put the firm in a non-compliance state that can even be more serious.
- Controlling Loss from End User’s Activities: It is one of the common cloud computing security risks. Suppose a salesman who is resigning from the organization might download customer address book and upload it to his personal cloud service and hence, have full right to access it in future. There are possibilities that he can use this information in competitive firm with greedy nature of earning more. This scenario describes the firms come in dark situation because of the workers. One will never come to know when things got happened and how will they affect in future. The described example itself shows that the respective firm is not even knowing that the resigned employee had taken the data.
- Malware Infections Unleashing the Attacks: The cloud services can be utilized as data ex-filtration vector. There is a novel on techniques for data ex-filtration where attackers encode the confidential information in form of video files and then, upload them to YouTube. One more malware was detected, which ex-filtrates the sensitive files through the Twitter account with 140 characters simultaneously. Talking about the Dyre malware, the criminals were using the services of file sharing for delivering malware to the targets that are using phishing attacks.
- Business Partners Associated Breaches: It is quite obvious that the contract between organization partners limit that how information is accessed and who all are having rights to work with it. Whenever an employee moves the restricted file on cloud in absence of any authentic person, this violates the business contract and it is possible that legal action takes place. Let us understand this cloud computing security risk with an example – Suppose there is a service of cloud, which holds the permission of sharing all the information that gets uploaded on cloud. The sharing of files is assigned in a way that the third party can also use them under certain set of defined terms and condition. This scenario automatically puts confidential items for breach by sharing files just after uploading them on the cloud.
- Diminishing the Customer Faith and Trust: Data leakage necessarily results in breaking of the customer’s trust. Till now, one of the largest breaches was of the information of the cards. The cybercriminals have stolen around 40 millions of credit card and debit card numbers of customers from the Target firm. This sudden leakage kept the customers away from the Target business and hence, a huge loss in business. Unexpectedly, it impacted the revenue of the firm with no possibility of recovering from it.
- Revealing of Data Breach Information: If the regulated or confidential information is kept on the cloud and if in case breach occurs then, the firm might be asked to reveal the information about data leakage and send messages to the potential victims. Specific regulations like EU data protection directive and HIPAA and HITECH in the industry of healthcare requires these type of disclosures. These situations might result in the legal case against the company because the customer’s data is being compromised.
Get Rid off All Cloud Computing Security Risks By CASB Vendors
Every coin is having 2 sides – where there are several advantages of using cloud computing technology, same on another hand there are disadvantages as well. The occurrence of disadvantages is because of the carelessness of the person using cloud storage. If the things are not secured properly with security measures then, obviously they will get lost. So, organizations can go for a cloud data security service like CASB vendors that is made to resolve all cloud computing security risks with saying of NO to cloud data breaches.
